Gravedigger Reimagined2
by Hannah Taylor1
Summary: Part of my GraveDigger Reimagined series:  A revisionist twist to "The Bullet in the Brain."  Booth gets himself in a very tight spot and has time to think over the mess he's made of his relationship with Brennan and how he can repair things.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This is a ****complete ****revisionist twist on the sniper-chasing scene in **_**The Bullet in the Brain**_**. I'm filing it under my GraveDigger Re-imagined series' title (from way back last summer), as it falls into that same vein. It will be 4, maximum 5, chapters, posted in installments of approximately 3500 words. I'm writing the last installment now. Work also continues on my next multi-chap fic.**

**Thanks so much to everybody who left kind reviews for **_**Crazy Over Me**_**! I wasn't sure how a straight-up songfic would go over, and am very grateful for the positive response. Your feedback encourages me to keep writing. And thanks so much to L, who was such a wonderful beta for this piece.**

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The underbrush seemed allied with Jake Broadsky, dragging Booth down as it did time and again by grabbing his hair, smacking him across the face, wrapping around his feet. The third time he went sprawling, he tasted blood and didn't have time to figure out whether it was from a busted nose or lip. He dragged himself upright and started forward again, keeping the sniper as much in his sight as possible. It would be hard to find him if he disappeared in the heavy, darkened forest and the thought of not knowing where Broadsky was made Booth's gut clench even as he slipped on a mud slick and almost did a nose-plant into a frigid little creek. Basic sniper training dictated: _Don't let him get behind you, or you're dead_.

But the man didn't seem inclined to veer off the path he'd initially chosen. He plowed ahead, using his wide shoulders to forge a trail just a few yards ahead. It was easy enough to follow him by sound as much as it was by sight. Gradually, Booth began to get the uncomfortable feeling that he might be being led. Broadsky knew the terrain better than he did. Why didn't he use that knowledge to his advantage? And a sniper of that caliber wouldn't just randomly run without a target in mind. He had to be headed somewhere specific …

Booth had barely processed the thought when the world exploded around him. A giant orange fireball lit up the sky, eclipsing all manner of trees and bushes. He hit the ground, covering his head to protect it from the falling debris that rained down all around him. His ears rang in the aftermath of the almost sonic boom and his eyes watered from the acrid smoke pouring from somewhere close by.

Again, he tasted blood, but this time he was more certain of its origins. He reached up and touched the wound at his temple. There was no way to tell how bad the gash was, but it was leaking O-positive all over his expensive suit. Underneath all the layers of sound and sensation that the explosion had generated, Booth made out the harsh snap of a twig somewhere nearby.

"_You shouldn't have followed me, Seeley. I can outrun and outshoot you, and it looks like I can also outthink you. Too bad. I wouldn't have minded a longer chase scene."_

Booth opened his mouth to say something, then closed it hard, sinking his teeth through his lower lip as a blow smashed across the back of his skull. He knew the feeling and would've put a name to the sensation-_pistol-whipped—_if he hadn't already been unconscious.

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**

Brennan paced her office, holding the cellphone to her ear. "I've checked his office, his apartment, Rebecca's place, the hockey stadium—Booth is nowhere to be found. Nor is he returning my messages."

"I'm sure he's fine, Temperance." Hannah spoke soothingly on the other end of the line. "I know Seeley. Sometimes he just needs his space. He'll come home when he gets hungry."

"You may know Seeley," Brennan retorted, "But I know Booth."

"They're the same person," Hannah replied, sounding confused.

"They are, and yet they are not." Brennan felt rage rise within her at the journalist's blasé, patronizing attitude in the face of her boyfriend's disappearance. "While I do not accept the field of psychology as a valid science, Sweets has made a valid point in stating that Booth has several different personas he affects, depending on the company he is keeping, and two of those identities can be divided into his first and last name."

Sweets' head lifted from where it had been resting on his interlaced phalanges. His eyebrows rose into what a less literally-minded individual would have called a surprised question mark. Brennan looked away from him and turned toward her desk, eyes automatically falling on a picture taken by Angela at the Jeffersonian Halloween party two years ago. Booth was wearing his makeshift squint disguise, paired with a Vanity Smurf tie that Brennan had jokingly given him, and which she had never expected him to actually wear. She had on her usual Wonder Woman outfit, and was leaning up against him, her head companionably resting on his shoulder, drawn close to him by his arm around her waist. It occurred to her that she also had two different personas—Brennan and Bones. She couldn't be Bones without Booth, and the thought of losing that part of herself made something inside her feel empty.

"Temperance, you're jumping to conclusions—"

Brennan interrupted, "With you, Seeley wears boring ties and belt buckles that could never be misidentified as modern day codpieces. He eats figs, prefers wine to beer, and rarely makes leaps of judgment that are predicated on his gastric system, rather than his brain. With me, Booth wears striped socks, eats pie, downs shots of tequila, and regularly makes intuitive assumptions that prove remarkably crucial in the resolution of our cases. Maybe your Seeley would behave differently, but my _Booth_ is not prone to simply vanishing without providing a rational explanation first. And he would never go out of town without first letting his son know of his whereabouts. Therefore, my factually-drawn conclusion is that Booth is, in fact, missing!" She snapped the phone shut and jammed it into her coat pocket furiously, ignoring the worried looks from her assembled team.

"Sweetie, I know you're upset, but maybe you should calm down a little—"

"No." Brennan rounded on Angela, knowing her best friend meant well with that gentle, cautious tone, and feeling irrationally outraged at it anyway. "It's been 15 hours. If Booth went after the sniper by himself, that behavior would follow previously establish patterns of misplaced heroism. He went after Broadsky on his own, thinking that because the property was in his name, the vendetta should remain between the two of them rather than dragging in innocent outsiders. And now he's in trouble."

Cam nodded from the couch, where she was seated beside Wendell and Hodgins. "She's right. Booth wouldn't just cut out in the middle of a murder investigation. It's the GraveDigger all over again. If the FBI won't help us find him, we'll just have to do it ourselves, like we did last time he got buried."

"I'm in," Sweets said immediately. "You're not alone in this, Dr. Brennan."

"I'm not," she choked, glaring at the kind-hearted psychiatrist, "But Booth is. He is all alone, somewhere. Last time that somewhere was a boat rigged with explosives. We have to find him."

"We will," Angela said firmly, getting to her feet and pressing her hands to her back to relieve a muscle spasm. "So. Who's going to go explore that property, other than the pregnant lady whose husband will hogtie her if she so much as suggests setting foot at the crime scene?"

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**

Booth's head thrummed with pain as he struggled his way back to consciousness. It wasn't a typical wake-up-out-of-a-smashed-in-head experience. Rather, he somehow knew in the back of his mind that all was not well and that he might want to come around sooner, rather than later, but his body wasn't immediately cooperative. It took several minutes of arguing with his brain, which was arguing with his battered nerve-endings, before there seemed to be an overall détente inside his head which allowed him to open his eyes.

They fluttered open and he looked around, realizing they might as well have stayed closed, for all he could see. Booth attempted to see his fingers after placing them directly in front of his face. Even that small movement, raising his hands from his stomach where they had been neatly folded, caused stabs of pain throughout his right shoulder.

Nada. There wasn't even a hint of a silhouette of his hands, which led Booth to several theories.

a. He was in a cave.

This theory was discarded quickly, given the lack of smooth stone around him, and the relatively warm, dry temperature of his confinement space.

b. He didn't have eyes anymore.

This rather macabre idea went by the wayside after he touched his eyelids, blinked rapidly, then rubbed his eyeballs, just checking to make sure everything was in place, which it seemed to be.

c. He was buried alive.

That seemed to pretty much fit the picture, especially given Taffett's involvement in this whole mess.

It took a minute before Booth's mind cleared enough for him to realize that the whole hands-neatly-folded-on-his-stomach was especially weird. He twisted sideways, welcoming the pain that his obviously dislocated shoulder presented him with, as it only helped wake him up faster. Trying to turn rapidly brought home the realization of the close quarters he found himself in. His bruised skull immediately bumped into the ceiling.

Booth felt his pulse accelerate. He tried to turn the opposite direction and encountered the same problem. Just above his nose, less than an inch away, there was a rough ceiling that prevented any kind of actual full body movement. He reached out to the left and found another wall, then to the right, and located its twin. Running his fingers across each surface, he decided he was enclosed on all sides by pinewood. On a hunch, he tried to kick his feet and immediately bumped into a barrier.

His pulse went from a mere jog to a full-throttle race. Booth slammed his fists into the ceiling above him. He beat on the surface until sweat ran down his face and mingled with the dried blood from his various injuries. There was no discernible effect on the structural integrity of his prison. His breathing was loud and harsh in his ears, and he cursed in fury and fear—_Come on. Come on. Motherf-__**COME ON!-**_ as he kicked and scratched and headbutted, all to no avail.

He could've gone on for quite some time in similar fashion, but a tiny voice of reason finally broke through. Oddly enough, it sounded liked Brennan.

_You're in a coffin. 84 by 28 by about 23. Physical exertion will only speed the consumption of your limited supply of oxygen. _

Booth dropped back from the half-sit-up he'd been in. His bloodied hands curled into fists, and he had to force back the urge to start all over again, hammering at the walls around him until they gave way. Terror was a strong taskmaster, but his partner's calm, steady voice was stronger.

_If you are entombed in a standard coffin, you will have approximately two hours of oxygen, if that, before you begin to suffocate. _

The walls around him pretty much confirmed _standard coffin._

_You need to limit your physical movements to the bare minimum, and slow your heart rate in order to level out your breathing._

She was right. She was always right.

_I will find you, Booth. Be still. Conserve your oxygen. I __**will **__find you._

Booth felt his heart rate finally begin to slow, even as the blood in his ears still pounded so loudly he could barely hear himself think. There was next to nothing he could do to help himself right now, but Brennan would not give up on him.

In the dark, he felt his chest tighten for a reason entirely unrelated to his imprisonment. He'd given up on her, on them, but she had remained loyal throughout. It wasn't totally inappropriate that he was hemmed in by dirt on all sides, when that's pretty much what he'd shoveled spadefuls of at Brennan ever since getting back from Afghanistan.

For months, he'd refused to go near that door, but now his mind threw it wide open. Hannah wouldn't find him. She wouldn't even think to look for him until it was too late. It wasn't her fault that she didn't know him better; he hadn't let her in. Brennan was the only woman he'd ever given a glimpse of the real Booth, and she'd proven worthy of that carefully placed trust, unlike him.

Hannah might be his girlfriend. Brennan was his partner. Hannah would mourn him after he was dead and gone. Brennan would leave no stone unturned to make sure such mourning did not have to happen.

_Okay, Bones. _He settled back and took one long breath which he let out slowly, reaching for what he'd learned years ago about enduring torture with a minimum of reaction. _Work your squint magic. _

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**

Brennan stalked the Jeffersonian platform, looking for something useful she could do. She and Cam had spent hours combing through the wreckage at the bombsite, searching for any clue to Booth, including Booth himself. The painstaking search for bone fragments had been agonizing for Brennan. As she searched for clues to her partner's whereabouts, every piece of charred wood she turned over or destroyed chunk of furniture she shoved aside left her wondering what she might find underneath. In the end, the investigation gave them no leads, either positive or negative. Their one clue was a set of muddy tracks leading away from the crime scene in a southern direction.

Without warning, she swooped down on Hodgins. "Have you discovered anything?"

The entomologist glanced up. He'd carefully created a dental stone cast of the tire impressions, had dipped the mold in ink and was now running it over a sheet of butcher block paper. "Maybe." He led Brennan over to a table strewn with a series of similar ink imprints and pointed to various red circles he'd made on different impressions. "See these? They're mold marks, created during production. They're all identical, meaning that the tires were made in the same factory."

Brennan was less than impressed. "How is that helpful in determining where Broadsky took Booth?"

"Sometimes criminals have different tires on their getaway car, in order to make their origin harder to isolate," Hodgins explained. "But these—the tire camber and tread design are unique." He indicated the computer where Angela had input the data into a C.A.S.T. forensics search engine. "The wheelbase and front track don't match anything else on the regular market. This was a custom job. If we can figure out where the tires were manufactured, we can most likely identify who sold them, or at least who they were sold to."

"In all likelihood, Booth doesn't have that much time," Brennan pointed out. "You have to do better, Hodgins. This is the only lead we have. I need you to work faster."

She knew all too well how long that process of identification could take, not to mention how hypothetical this particular lead was. They didn't have anything else to go on, but that knowledge didn't abet her sense of frustration at her total lack of control over the situation.

"You want speed or you want accuracy?" Hodgins demanded, blue eyes flashing with irritation.

"Both," Brennan replied bluntly.

"Stop it." Angela stepped between the two scientists. "Sweetie, you need to step it down a notch. Hovering over Hodgins like you're going to bring a ruler down across his knuckles if he doesn't get the answer right isn't helping him to hurry."

In spite of her overwhelming concern for Booth, the look of weary tension on her friends' faces sent a wave of guilt through Brennan. Ever since her partner's disappearance, they'd been working without rest, and without complaint.

"You should get some rest." She glanced meaningfully at the artist's four-months' pregnant midriff.

"Not until we find Booth," Angela retorted stubbornly, giving her husband a warning glance when he unwisely tried to open his mouth to concur with Brennan's suggestion. "Bren, we're all doing the best we can."

"You are," Brennan agreed. "However, I've done very little to aid the progress of this investigation. There are no bones, no clothes' remnants, no tissue samples to examine for DNA—my particular skill set is entirely useless in this instance." She knew she was becoming over-emotional and was embarrassed by the strained pitch of her voice and the exchanged looks of concern between Hodgins and Angela.

"You want to help me run the database query?" Angela nodded at the computer, again glancing out of the corner of her eye at Hodgins.

Humiliated by her friend's good intentions, Brennan frowned. "You don't require my assistance to do your job. I'm going to call Caroline and see if she has made any progress in getting the FBI involved in the investigation."

She moved toward her office, aware that the whispered conversation behind her was only her friends showing societally appropriate concern, but irked nonetheless by the feeling that she was being treated like a child.

Stepping inside, Brennan hovered momentarily, at a loss for what to do. She knew better than to interrupt Caroline, despite what she had said to Angela. If the prosecutor had information to share, she would call. Disturbing her would not resolve the mystery of Booth's disappearance any faster, and might even hinder the investigation.

She closed the door and took a step toward her desk, thinking of the many emails she needed to answer. Hesitancy was not her standard mode of operating, but she found that anything unrelated to Booth's investigation was so far from important that she couldn't even consider undertaking it. Still … she had to do _something in_ order to feel she was contributing to finding him.

Picking up the phone, she dialed Rebecca's number. Parker answered on the first ring.

"Dr. Bones?"

Rebecca had Caller ID. Brennan had not been expecting to speak to Booth's son and her uncertainty of what he did and did not know flustered her. She sat down on the couch.

"Hello, Parker."

"Have you found my dad yet?"

So he did know. It made sense—neither Booth nor Rebecca was prone to lying to their child.

"Not yet," she admitted. "I'm sorry, Parker. We're working very hard to locate your father."

"You'll find him."

Parker's hopeful voice added a layer of nausea to Brennan's already decidedly queasy stomach.

"Why aren't you doing some scientific stuff?" he inquired. "To help find my dad, I mean."

"I—" Brennan stumbled over the words. What was appropriate to share, without upsetting him even more than he already must be? "This investigation is somewhat beyond my area of expertise."

She could almost hear Parker frown through the phone. "You're my dad's best friend."

Brennan closed her eyes, trying to hold back the swell of grief. "Hannah is your father's best friend, Parker."

"No," he insisted. "She's just his girlfriend. She doesn't even know he hates figs, even though she keeps buying them and he secretly throws them away."

A tear broke free from Brennan's iron self-control and she let it fall without wiping it away. "Parker," she began. "I can't promise that—"

"We're supposed to go see a game this weekend," Parker interrupted, with undiluted optimism. "Maybe you can come see it with us after you find him."

"Is your mother around?" Brennan asked, choosing the coward's way out of the conversation.

"She's in the shower." For the first time, a note of worry injected itself into his voice. "Are you not looking for my dad because you're mad at him?"

She opened her eyes in confusion and blinked away the haze of tears. "Why would I be angry?"

"My best friend kind of forgot we were friends for a while too. He was hanging out with this guy from another hockey team and didn't even come to my birthday, but we're cool again now."

Brennan scrubbed her hand over her face, simultaneously irritated at her lack of self control and surprised by how perceptive Booth's son was. Then again, perhaps his ability to read subtle kinesthetic and vocal signals was something he had unwittingly passed on to his progeny. He'd repeatedly proved to be an excellent teacher. She grimaced as another tear sneaked by and got up to grab a tissue.

"I'm not angry at your father, Parker. Even if I was, it wouldn't prevent me from doing everything possible to find him. I care about him—" her voice snapped and she struggled to regain control of it, "I care about him a great deal."

"He likes you too," Parker confided, sounding reassured. "Dad says sometimes friendships change, but you and him, you know everything about each other. That makes you an expert on how to find him."

She was at a loss for how to answer, but he solved the problem for her with his next, confident command.

"Go find my Dad, Dr. Bones. He's probably getting impatient. He doesn't like to wait."

Brennan smiled, thinking of all the times her partner had hovered irritably nearby, urging her to hurry so they could get to a crime scene. "No," she agreed, raising her eyebrows at Angela, who had just walked into the room and was assessing her emotional composure without any pretense of subtlety. "He doesn't."

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Part 2 of GD3. FYI: The following scenario in the coffin may seem implausible, but I did do quite a bit of research and kept running across the same 'how to survive and/or escape being buried alive' advice. If it turns out to be wholly inaccurate, so be it.**

**Thanks to my wonderful beta L, and to those who left me such kind words for Part 1. As always, your comments feed my creativity. I have no less than 6 fics on the backburner right now, some one-shots, some multi-chaps, some in early stages of writing, others still just ideas.**

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**

The air around him was slowly getting stale. Because of his stupidity in going after Broadsky without backup, the FBI would stall on sending people out to look for him. It wasn't personal, just protocol: Twenty-four hours had to elapse before a person was officially 'missing.' Twenty-four hours which might mean the difference between Parker growing up with his dad around, or having to remember Booth only in pictures. The thought left him cold, even when he was still sweating from his previous exertions. Rebecca was a great mom, but her current boyfriend was decidedly not step-up-to-the-plate material.

Booth concentrated on taking measured breaths and tried to think of something outside the box. Ha. He wished Brennan was around to hear his lousy joke. His thoughts shifted to her, as they had done ever since he woke up in the coffin

If he died, his partner would undoubtedly offer to help Rebecca. Financially, Brennan could, and likely would, make up the difference for Booth's child support check. More importantly, Booth knew she'd keep an eye on the situation and make sure Parker and Rebecca were taken care of. He could even imagine Brennan deciding to make a ritual of taking Parker to a hockey game once a month, or something. For someone so non-tradition-minded, the anthropologist had a strong attachment to such steadfast routines, and was sensitive to the fact that children needed stability in their lives. She would encourage Parker to help her understand the game, and help him heal in the process.

And Hannah … Booth swallowed a frustrated sigh that would only further decimate his meager reserves of oxygen. Hannah liked Parker, but she would undoubtedly see little reason to remain in his life after Booth's death. Their relationship was friendly, but didn't begin to approach the connection Parker and Brennan shared. She might stick around for a little while and help Rebecca out with some expenses, but then a new assignment would come up and she'd be off to the other side of the world. It was an arrangement Booth had accepted, in exchange for …

In exchange for what? What had he gotten, exactly, by forfeiting his relationship with Brennan? Hannah was kind. Intelligent. Attractive. But in her own way, the journalist had been every bit as dishonest as Booth. He knew the foundation of her friendship with Brennan was based on curiosity as much as it was wariness. _Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. _He rapped his knuckles on the ceiling, struggling to stay still. He wasn't good at **sit and wait, **especially not as a long-denied awareness began to grow upon him and he itched to scramble out of this damn coffin and do something about it.

He and Hannah had been lying to each other all along, playing a game of pretend designed to disguise their mutual realization that the chemistry they'd shared in Afghanistan had not made it back to the United States. He was bored with her, and frustrated at her refusal to stick around long enough to learn anything meaningful about his life. She was stifled by life in DC, and would undoubtedly run for the nearest guerilla-infested mountain range if they ended things. Even the sex was less than stellar, which had forced them both into even more pretending about how great it was, so as not to hurt each other's feelings. So who _had _wound up being hurt? Brennan.

He swiped the sweat from his eyes, tried again stubbornly to push the wooden lid away through sheer willpower, and noted the increasing hum of pain in his head. Even though it might indicate something worse than a concussion—maybe a skull fracture from that explosion—he didn't mind. As long as he could feel pain, he was alive. And as long as he was alive, he could make himself the promise that as soon as he got out of this mess, he would fix things. He thought back to her tears in the SUV, and his total lack of a reaction. She'd opened herself up to him, given him everything he'd ever demanded, and he'd thrown it back in her face. "_Hannah's not a consolation prize."_

"Son of a bitch," he muttered out loud, feeling sick at the memory of Brennan's anguish.

After all those promises never to hurt her, he had made her doubt herself so much that she was forced to seek comfort from the deceased Lauren Eames, who apparently was easier to talk to than Booth. Sure, he had saved her life from that car, but that was only because the security guard had tipped him off about where she'd gone. Brennan wouldn't have been standing in the middle of the street, searching so hard for answers about her own humanity that she almost got run over, if Booth had only been alert enough to her emotional state to realize that she was dangerously over-empathizing with their victim. A victim who was trying to purchase heroin because she required more and more dangerous doses of adrenaline to help her 'feel something.'

The weight of guilt added to the pressure slowly building in his lungs. Brennan didn't need base jumping or its equivalent to be alive to the world in all its beauty and ugliness. She felt everything. Her squint façade was just that—a wall between herself and the world, to keep people from seeing how deeply she cared. To keep people like Booth from hurting her.

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**

Emotions now firmly under lock and key, Brennan strode from Cam's office, where she'd been on a conference call with several higher ups at the FBI. One skill she'd overlooked in her arsenal of tools to find Booth was the ability to intimidate. Following her conversation with Parker, she'd bullied her way through various subordinates and Cullen himself, until she found the person who finally gave the go ahead to declare Booth as missing.

She approached Hodgins and Angela, who were still laboring over the tire database and looked at her warily, clearly expecting another interrogation. "The FBI has joined the search."

Angela broke into a smile. "Attagirl, Bren!"

Brennan effectively shut down any kind of reaction she might have had to those words and continued with clinical detachment, "Given that we are no closer to discerning Booth's location than we were five hours ago, and that we do not have a reasonable hypothesis as to what circumstances he might be in or how much time he might have left—"

"I might."

All three turned to find Sweets stepping onto the platform, holding out a thick FBI file. "Jake Broadsky has a definite psychopathology of assimilation. Can I borrow a table?"

The team gathered around him as he walked up to an empty gurney and laid out a series of 4 photographs.

"This guy," he began, pointing at a blood-spattered, balding hulk of a man missing half of his head, "was known as the Cannibal. He terrorized Flatbush, Brooklyn in the late 80s, leaving a specific calling card: A human finger bone that had been gnawed clean. Jake Broadsky was the sniper who took him down."

Brennan frowned. "What does this have to do—"

Sweets held up a hand and extracted another document from his file. He laid it directly beneath the photograph of the Cannibal. "This is Jake Broadsky."

Angela let out a horrified gasp, while Brennan studied the page interestedly. The photograph showed a large man sporting a crew cut, wearing Army fatigues covered in blood-spatter. Protruding from his mouth, cigarette-style, was a human phalange.

Hodgins whistled. "Wow."

Sweets pointed to the next picture, this one of a decaying cadaver, surrounded by a strange assortment of urns. "Maxwell J. Kaufman," Sweets explained. "Murdered and raped upwards of 17 young girls in the early 90s. When he started threatening the President's daughter, Broadsky was called in."

"What's in the urns?" Hodgins asked.

"Ashes of his victims. Inside each urn was also a specific quantity of plastic beads, representing the number of minutes it took for the person to die."

Brennan waited impatiently as Sweets reached into his file a second time and laid a picture beneath Kaufman's photograph. "Once again, we have Jake Broadsky."

The sniper was wearing a string of colorful beads around his neck and smiling twistedly, while posing beside a large urn.

Sweets indicated the third picture, which was of a relatively slight young man with several facial piercings and a dog collar around his neck, engraved with a series of cryptic letters.

"The collar bears the initials of every person the guy killed. Who wants to take a guess at what the next shot of Broadsky is gonna look like?" He didn't wait for an answer before pulling out a picture of Broadsky's own pierced face and meaty neck, surrounded by an identical leather collar with different letters scratched into it.

"Man, that is warped." Hodgins shook his head.

Understanding began to dawn on Brennan. "You're positing that Broadsky feels some kind of connection to the killers he is hired to take down."

"More than a connection," Sweets corrected, indicating the final photograph, this one of Heather Taffett's headless cadaver. "Jake Broadsky is unable to feel satisfied with his own life. His military records show a man who is constantly shifting personalities, seeking gratification through personal metamorphosis, to the extent that he loses all sight of who the original Jake Broadsky might have been. Taking on the characteristics of his victims gave him a constant source of new identities to try on and, when he got bored, he simply moved on to the next, and then the next, seeking more and more dangerous personas to assimilate in an attempt to reconcile the fractured facets of his self-image."

Pieces began to fall into place. Brennan looked over the pictures again, then up at Sweets. "You believe that Broadsky killed the GraveDigger not as an act of altruism, but in order to take over her place in the spotlight which he so desperately sought out for himself."

"Taffett's trademark was burying people alive," Angela mused aloud.

Sweets nodded. "I think Jake Broadsky felt Taffett had betrayed her identity by enlisting the help of other people in burying her victims. He quite_ literally_ wants to become a GraveDigger."

Brennan's eyes widened. "We should be looking at cemeteries. Cemeteries with a direct connection to Heather Taffett." She turned towards Cam, who had joined the conversation without her noticing, and the rest of the team. "Get an oxygen tank, call the FBI, and meet me in the car in 5 minutes."

She hurried toward the stairs.

Sweets kept up a running commentary as they headed for the exit. "I would suggest that Broadsky is attempting to rise from the grave on this occasion. Where Heather Taffett was buried is where he believes his new identity will be birthed."

"We have no idea how long Booth has been buried alive."

"If Broadsky follows his usual pattern, he'll be doing things exactly like Taffett would have, except that he's the actual person digging the grave. So he would have created some sort of scenario where Booth had 24 hours to live." Sweets stopped Brennan with a hand on her arm as she moved toward her parking space. "I've got shovels in my car."

Grateful for his forethought, she changed directions and followed him towards his vehicle. "A standard coffin only contains enough oxygen to support life for, at most, two hours."

"Broadsky may not have buried Booth immediately," Sweets replied. "How many hours has he been missing, exactly?"

"23," Brennan said, after a rapid calculation of the hours elapsed since she positively determined that her partner had gone missing.

Sweets unlocked his car and climbed into the driver's seat. "Following the 24 hour minus 2 hours of oxygen formula, Broadsky would have waited 22 hours before burying Booth."

Brennan climbed in beside Sweets. "Based on that calculation, Booth will have approximately an hour of oxygen left, if he has remained calm and relatively immobile since his entombment."

He checked his rearview mirror to see if there was any sign of the rest of the team yet.

"Sweets." Brennan looked over at the psychiatrist. "I—I love him."

She didn't know why she chose to tell him, when she hadn't even told Angela. He'd long held the theory that she and Booth were meant to be romantically involved and his prodding had led to Booth's revelation on the steps of the Hoover Building. Initially, Brennan had resented the psychiatrist's interference and the damage she felt he'd done to her relationship with Booth. However, over the months since returning from Maluku, she had realized she was, in fact, somewhat grateful. At least she knew that Booth had once had feelings for her. True, she had missed her chance. But she was grateful to know that some part of her was loveable enough for another human being to desire in a manner other than physically. For a time, she had been worthy of Booth's love, and she did not take that honor lightly.

Sweets didn't gloat. "I know you do," he said quietly. "And Agent Booth loves you."

"He loves Hannah." She'd repeated those words in her mind so many times that she had finally come to believe them. Belief was one thing, accepting the fact that he had moved on without her was another. Her voice cracked slightly as she continued, "I missed my chance."

"Hannah's just a shield, Dr. Brennan."

"I don't know what that means." She glanced impatiently at the mirror. Two more minutes and she was going to leave without the others.

"When Booth went off to Afghanistan, he was nursing a pretty significant wound to his pride," Sweets elaborated. "He felt shot down by you, so he kitted out his subconscious in riot gear, to protect it from any stray emotional bullets that might take him down in a war zone."

Finally, Brennan spotted the Jeffersonian crew hurrying towards Sweets' car.

"When he came back," Sweets continued, noticing the team and starting up the car, "The armor never totally came off. He's trying to protect himself from getting blown up by you again."

Brennan looked out the window in an attempt to hide her unsettled emotions. "I didn't mean to blow him up."

"You blew each other up," Sweets replied. "Now it's time for you guys to pick up the pieces and put them back together better than they fit in the first place."

"Riot gear and puzzle pieces." Brennan frowned at her friends' approach. Much as she wanted to be already on the road toward the cemetery, she didn't want them hearing this conversation. "That is a very convoluted metaphor. And it still does not take into account that Booth is now seriously involved in a new romantic relationship."

"Hannah's just part of the bulletproof vest and helmet." Sweets unlocked the doors as the team arrived. He glanced at Brennan and lowered his voice. "The thing about riot gear, Dr. Brennan, is that it has weaknesses. And it can be removed, albeit in pieces. Think about it." He frowned as Hodgins, Cam and Angela took too long getting into the car. "Booth's gonna need every minute he has left. This is rush hour. And Taffett's grave is in Maryland."

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**

He was breathing way too fast, his ribcage heaving in its efforts to pull oxygen from the carbon-monoxide saturated air around him.

In the darkness, Booth clasped his hands together and refrained from reaching for his side-arm, which he'd discovered Broadsky had left in the coffin with him. With only one bullet in the chamber, there was little question what the sniper had intended. That was one victory Booth had no intention of giving the sick bastard. He struggled with the thought of putting a bullet in the coffin lid, maybe making it easier to push away, but had no idea what was on top of him. His thoughts were increasingly muddled, but he managed to hold onto enough coherence to realize that the bullet was no avenue of escape.

A gentle weight was descending upon him, urging his eyelids closed. He yawned and fought against the sleepy sensation, knowing that if he went under, he was never coming back out again. Desperately, he reached for something to keep his mind working, but the usually reliable sports stats proved to be a jumble of numbers and names that he couldn't sort through without adding to his growing headache. Even the saints were just a parade of fuzzy figures in his head, some with a vague shape that he might recall from Catholic school, but none that seemed as familiar as they once might have been.

Booth closed his eyes, mentally pushing the walls of his coffin aside as he conjured up a picture of Parker and Brennan hunched over some science project or other, laughing. If he wanted any kind of chance to hear that laughter again or to tell her how sorry he was, he needed to get a serious grip. The thought helped him regain some control of his emotions. He had to live. For Parker. For Brennan.

Whether or not she ever dared to trust him again after the way he'd treated her, he would leave no stone unturned until she at least realized she shared no blame in their missed chance. He'd been the one who assaulted her that night on the steps of the Hoover Building. From zero to 60, he'd thrown himself at her, totally dishonoring all the emotional growth she'd made, somehow expecting her to go from being Temperance Brennan to being every other woman he'd ever been with, swooning at his declaration of love.

Except, he hadn't declared any kind of love. He'd never even said the words, Booth realized disgustedly. It was all **I**. _I'm that guy. I know. I want._ What about what _she _wanted? She'd been afraid, and, rather than accepting her fears and offering to walk that road beside her until they were assuaged, his bruised ego had responded instantly with, "I have to move on." How must she have felt?

He had given up. She never had.

_I will find you, Booth._

He had to let her know, she already _had_ found him. She'd long ago begun the process of disentombing him from all the painful memories of his past, without even knowing it. It was no coincidence that, in a small, pitch black space, his son and Brennan's image were the only visible things. They were the light to his darkness.

_I won't give up, Bones_, he promised her silently._ Not this time._

Reaching into his coat pocket, Booth extracted his pen, which Broadsky had also helpfully left in the coffin with him. On his right palm, he painstakingly wrote an abbreviated note to his son. For all he knew, it wouldn't even be legible, but he figured he should at least try. Just in case.

_**love you Parker you make me so proud son **_

Rolling up his shirt cuff to expose another patch of bare skin, he scrawled out a second note, this one punctuated with long pauses for him to gasp fetid air and wipe away sweat.

_**Bones sorry I let you down love you always it for me**_

The pen drew a long, inky slash across his forearm as it fell from his hand. Booth lurched into a half-sit-up, his lungs screaming for oxygen. It would be so easy to just give in and slip away. So much more peaceful. Dammit. He'd never done anything the easy way. As he choked and wheezed, flailing outward unconsciously, his fingers connected with the barrel of the gun. Somewhere in the back of his dying brain, a thought started to work its way forward. He shook his head hard, trying to clear it. Something to do with the gun. Bones. The gun. The sniper. The gun.

_Bones. The gun. Broadsky._

A shot of adrenaline briefly elevated Booth's sluggish pulse.

_Gun. Rescue. Broadsky. GUN._

Without thinking—there was nothing left for him to think with, his brain had expended its last reserves in warning him of the danger to Brennan—he leaned back, braced himself on the wooden floor and kicked the ceiling with every ounce of leftover energy. He kicked like his life depended on it, because hers did.

Booth felt, rather than heard, a slight crack in the besieged wood, and pressed his advantage, even as dark spots danced in front of his eyes. Clods of soil began to rain down on his face. Booth grabbed the sidearm and used the butt to smash his way through the fractured frame, too far gone to consider that the safety might not be on. He shoved his hands and arms through and heaved with the effort to push them aside, driving splinters under his nails as he clawed his way. Something wriggled down the back of his shirt, probably a confused earthworm.

Dirt filled his mouth, eyes, ears. He was going to suffocate. In the coffin. In the earth. Either way he was going to die, so it wasn't like it mattered anyway. He was unaware that he was shouting, consuming the last bit of oxygen keeping him alive. His brain seethed with distraught electrical impulses, trying to understand what was happening to the body they sustained, but one overriding impulse outshouted them all.

_Bones Broadsky GUN._

Half-buried in fragrant earth, Booth couldn't even fall back into the coffin when his tight grip on reality finally broke. He remained in a partially-upright position, reaching for the sky. He wasn't aware of the damage the head of the shovel did as it connected unsuspectingly with his already damaged skull, or of the shout accompanying it.

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Part 3 of 4. The last section will be posted next Thursday.**

**Warning: Hannah appears in this chapter. She's not around for long, but if you can't stand reading anything about her, you may want to avoid this section. To quote one of my reviewers, I don't dislike Hannah, per say. I dislike the person Booth becomes when he's with her. As such, I tried to be fair to her character, while simultaneously easing her out of the picture.**

**Thanks so much to those who reviewed Part 2 and to L, who keeps me both writing and smiling after long days.**

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**

"Booth!" Brennan saw his hunched frame before Hodgins did. Blood poured from his forehead, where the shovel's glancing blow had struck him. "BOOTH!"

She threw her shovel aside and dropped into the pit they had been excavating at a frantic rate for the last 20 minutes. The coffin gave way underneath her, spearing her ankles with splinters, but she didn't feel them as she reached for her partner. She was equally unaware of her stream-of-consciousness rambling as she cleared soil away from Booth's face and upper body and started CPR as best she could in the awkward space.

"Oh my God, Booth, Booth, I'm here, Booth, stay with me, you're gonna do this, BOOTH, get an ambulance, help me get him out of here, Booth, Booth, Booth, hang on, you're gonna make it …"

Tears running down her face softened the soil into a steady, muddy stream across her cheeks as she cleared dirt from his mouth, forced air into his lungs, cleared more dirt away, breathed more oxygen in, cleared and breathed and cleared and breathed and pleaded.

"Come on, Booth. You're gonna make it. Hang on. We're gonna get you out."

Arms reached in from all around to help lift him from the grave, to help pull her from his limp body but she fought back on the last count, insisting on being lifted up simultaneously, so she could continue breathing for him.

"Booth, _breathe! _ Come on, Booth, FIGHT THIS!"

Again, arms tried to pull her from him, and she dug her heels in, knowing that medics hadn't arrive on scene yet and that nobody else present knew as much as she did about human anatomy or Seeley Booth's will to live. She grabbed handfuls of the fabric of his shirt, and kept breathing until some member of her team warned intruders away.

She didn't see when his eyes first opened, though she felt his chest contract and expand forcefully, and she was on the receiving end of a torrent of vomited earth. It poured over her, rank and stinking, and she was so grateful. Grateful that there was enough oxygen left in his lungs to somehow expel the foreign particulates. Grateful she was on top of him, feeling his body coming alive to try and muster its defenses. Grateful for the foul substance she was now covered in, because it was no longer inside of him.

With help from an unseen hand, she turned him on his side to clear his airway as he continued to vomit, his large body seizing with each retch. She crouched in front of him, scooping debris from his mouth when he momentarily stopped, smearing it on her slacks and the damp earth in front of her, and repeating. Keeping his mouth open. Keeping his airway open. Holding his shoulders, uttering encouragement, feeling her own lungs start to expand and contract normally again.

"Temperance." She felt a hand on her back as Booth unleashed another flood of bile. "The ambulance just arrived."

Brennan looked up, never releasing her grip on Booth. Sweets nodded in the direction of the paramedics rapidly unloading a gurney. Her head dropped back to Booth and this time she spotted his wide open eyes.

"_Booth."_

Spastically, almost like he wasn't directly in control of them, his hands reached for her. Brennan took them in hers as she spotted the paramedics approaching in her peripheral vision.

"Hang on, Booth. Help is coming."

Nothing in her medical training prepared her for his abrupt lunge forward. He shouldn't have been physically capable of that kind of movement, but his body smashed into hers, knocking her to the ground with shocking force, contradicting previous empirical evidence. A deafening report sounded nearby, there was the sound of something cracking, and somebody screamed.

Brennan lay beneath him, the breath knocked out of her, ears still ringing and her mind whirling with confusion. Booth mumbled something halfway intelligible—her name, maybe—and then he was leveraging himself up. It all seemed to happen in slow motion, even though such a thing wasn't scientifically possible.

Brennan spotted the glitter of his sidearm, produced from somewhere, and heard, rather than saw, him fire the weapon. Her hands braced on his chest, she twisted her head sideways and saw a figure stumble out of the treeline, stagger another couple steps, then fall face-forward to the ground. For one long second, there was silence, except for Booth's ragged breathing as he collapsed back over her, then chaos erupted.

FBI agents were all over, some heading towards the corpse, others headed straight towards Brennan. Paramedics swarmed the scene, pulling Booth away. She scrambled upright, seeking to follow him wherever the ambulance was headed, but Angela appeared from somewhere and grabbed her arm. "Sweetie, you're bleeding."

Brennan frowned. "I'm not—" She trailed off as her face began to sting, the momentary rush of adrenaline fading away to allow pain. Reaching up, she touched her cheeks and found them raw and scraped, embedded with tiny particulates of stone.

Bewildered, Brennan looked first at the gurney, where paramedics were intubating Booth, then at Angela. "I don't understand."

Her friend gently took her shoulders and turned her slightly to the left. Brennan's eyes fell on Heather Taffett's gravestone. What remained of it.

"Cheri, you are one lucky squint." Caroline Julian stepped forward with a grim expression on her face, jerking her thumb at the neat gray slab that was now a pile of rubble. "That _could've_ been the pieces of your head."

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**

She was in his dreams. Holding his hand, perusing medical paperwork with an irate frown on her face, adjusting one of the many tubes running in and out of his veins. Booth could even swear he'd woken at some point, and she was asleep in a chair at his bedside, her lithe frame slumped forward to the point where her head lightly rested on his chest. He slept and woke and slept again, and always she was with him.

The next time he woke, the sensation of a balloon being inflated inside his head had diminished just enough that he could keep his eyes open for longer than a minute. Booth turned his head very slightly on the pillow, wincing at the immediate pain that triggered. Trying to limit his movement to his eyes, he scanned the room, searching for some evidence. No coat. No laptop. No personal items that looked like they might belong to a squint. He did spot a familiar looking GameBoy, suggesting that his son had been in the room recently.

Booth smiled wearily, in spite of his disappointment. He fumbled for the bell he knew had to be wrapped somewhere around the arm of the bed, hoping to buzz for a nurse to help him sit up. Get something to drink. Make a phone call or three. He located the call button and attempted to press it, but found it was stuck. Impatiently, he struggled with the device for a moment, before dropping it in exasperation and deciding to take matters into his own hands.

Awkwardly, he began to hitch himself upright, ignoring the warning sparks of pain flashing like strobelights behind his eyelids. His chest burned like someone had taken a blowtorch to it. Stubbornly refusing to give in to common sense, Booth struggled to push himself into a sitting position. He might've made it, too, if one of the arms of the bed he was clutching hadn't decided to give way right about them.

He lurched sideways, scrambling to keep from toppling straight onto the cold tile floor.

"Seeley Booth, can I not leave you for one minute before you get yourself in trouble?" Hannah's teasing voice came from somewhere behind him.

He didn't have time to reply before her hands were on his shoulders and she was firmly leveraging him back onto the bed. As he sank back into the tangled bedsheets with an exhausted groan, she leaned over him, smiling slightly.

"Welcome back, Houdini."

Booth blinked hard. His vision was fuzzy and he only hoped that was because of the eye-drops they'd probably been plying him with to clean out all the mud and other coffin grime. Hannah's blonde hair had a haloish appearance to it, which struck him as amusing. She wasn't anymore angelic than he was.

She took his hand. "Seeley, this isn't Afghanistan. You could've called for back-up before running after the terrorist."

"Bones." It came out like a croak, so much so that it wasn't a surprise when Hannah leaned in and asked,

"Huh?"

Booth coughed and cursed, wishing for a drink of water. "Bones."

"I don't know." Hannah sank into the chair beside him. "I just got here."

"Bones," he rasped again insistently, needing for her to get this message. "Bones is. My backup."

Hannah's smile faded, replaced by a look of something like guilt. She dropped his hand and clasped her hands in her lap. "I'm sorry, Seeley. I wasn't even in town when you went missing."

This wasn't the time or place, but Booth's brain wasn't functioning at its usually politically-correct speed. He cleared his throat again and tried for a longer sentence. "Did you fly back?"

She wasn't one to play games. His message registered clearly this time and Hannah dropped her chin to her chest for a moment before looking him straight in the eye.

"Not when she first called me. I just figured she was over-reacting."

"Bones doesn't overreact," he croaked.

"I know that," Hannah replied quietly, smoothing the fabric of her pants. "I made a mistake."

It was wrong to be angry at her for disbelieving something that so many other people had also failed to see. Booth awkwardly reached out and touched her knee.

"Not your fault. Bones … knows me."

"I'm supposed to know you. I'm your girlfriend."

Booth let out a long, wheezing breath. Bones wouldn't be making him talk, when he could obviously barely breathe. She would have offered to call the nurses by now, would've helped untangle his sheets, would've been asking if he needed water … something. Ironically, the woman who purported not to care about anybody was a hell of a lot better at taking care of people than both he and Hannah Burley were. He wet his lips and tried for a longer sentence, even when his brain felt like scrambled eggs.

"You're never in town long enough to get to know me. And I haven't exactly been an open book."

Hannah flinched. "I do care about you, Seeley. If I had known—"

"No," he interrupted tiredly. "You would've let Bones take care of things, because you know that's what she does best."

"My presence would only have interfered with the investigation." Hannah was beginning to sound angry. "As soon as she called to let me know you'd been found, I caught the next flight."

Damn, his throat hurt.

"It's wrong, Hannah." He watched her eyes register the impact of that statement. "We—this—it's all pretend."

"I moved from Afghanistan to be with you. How is that pretending?"

He could've argued with her. They'd both made mistakes, but the blame was probably largely on him. He didn't have the energy for fighting.

Booth coughed hard, feeling his ribcage seem to splinter each time he expelled air forcefully. Hannah reached for the call button and pressed it a couple of times. Realizing it was broken, she got up and moved to the door.

"We need a doctor in here."

A moment later, a nurse hurried into the room. She was efficient and cheerful, talking nonstop as she checked his vital signs and bandages, rearranged his sheets and adjusted his IVs. Booth caught Hannah's eye as she stood in the doorway, watching. He looked away for a moment as the nurse asked him a question and when he looked over again, she was gone.

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**

Angela stepped inside the small chapel, closing the door quietly behind her. She looked around and raised her eyebrows. The room had a makeshift stone altar, a prayer rug in the left corner of the room, a cross on the right, and a cluster of uncomfortable-looking chairs arranged in a semi-circle on the ugly green carpet.

"Wow. Religions 'R Us. What happens if a group decides it hasn't been represented?"

Brennan looked over from her chair at the center of the half-circle. "Typically, non-denominational chapels feature iconry related to the three major world religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam."

The artist shook her head. "I'd have bet a lot of money that this was the last place you'd be."

"It's quieter in here than the visitors' lounge, and no medical personnel are walking in and out constantly. I needed to think."

"About …" Angela prodded, settling herself into a squeaky metal chair with a grimace.

"The events of the last 96 hours," Brennan said shortly, not harboring much hope that Angela would leave it at that.

True to form, her friend lost no time in prying. "There have been quite a few of those, Bren."

She sighed, knowing there was no escaping. "I reacted with undeniably overt emotion in a situation which required a rational thought process."

"Sweetie. The man you love was buried alive. You can be excused for not being completely level-headed."

Brennan sat quietly for a while, carefully considering her words before finally replying. "I do love him."

Rather than squealing, as Brennan fully expected her to do, Angela reached over, grabbed her hand and squeezed gently. "You need to tell him that."

"I did."

"Wait. What?" Angela pressed her hand insistently, leaning in. "You told Booth this already?"

"Not verbatim. I … became somewhat emotional in the wake of the Eames' case." The memory of his cold response to her tears left her feeling hollow inside. "I confessed that I was sorry I had missed my chance with him."

"_Sweetie_." Angela's dark eyes were wide with surprise. "What did he say?"

"He reminded me of his relationship with Hannah."

Angela frowned. "What exactly did he say, Bren? This is important."

Brennan looked away. "_Hannah isn't a consolation prize, Bones. I love her."_

"He said _what_?" Angela looked like she'd been slapped, which was an accurate reflection of how Brennan had felt that night.

"I would prefer not to repeat his words again," Brennan said stiffly. "While I, admittedly, did find his words painful, he was correct in pointing out the new parameters of our relationship. Booth does not cheat. His integrity is one of the qualities I most respect about him."

Angela got to her feet abruptly.

"Where are you going?"

"To finish the job Broadsky started," Angela snapped, starting towards the door.

"Angela." Brennan hurried after her. "He's unconscious. To reprimand him at this point would serve no purpose. I should never have said anything. It put him in a very uncomfortable position."

"He's not unconscious anymore," Angela answered, eyes flashing. "That's what I came in here to tell you."

Brennan grabbed her friend's arm before she could open the door. "Booth is awake?"

"Not for long, now that I know why you were hiding in here."

"I wasn't hiding," Brennan protested.

"Brennan, you saved the man's life," Angela said flatly. "You rounded up the troops, put a bee in everybody's bonnet, and figured out where he was buried. You jumped into the grave and almost took a bullet while breathing for him. You've spent the last 72 hours sitting next to him, barely taking bathroom breaks. You smell like a graveyard because you haven't washed the mud out of your hair since Booth was brought in, and my bringing you fresh clothes was really pointless since you haven't even—"

"He also saved my life," Brennan cut in.

"And now you're hiding in a hospital chapel," Angela continued as though she hadn't been interrupted, "because you're terrified to even look him in the face, for fear he'll see how much you love him." She looked at her with something that might have been pity. "Sweetie, that's so completely twisted. You can't go on like this."

"I would appreciate it if you didn't speak to Booth about this," Brennan said quietly. "The only way to maintain some semblance of friendship with him is if he believes that I've truly accepted his relationship with Hannah. I don't want to destroy what remains of our work relationship, Angela. I value his partnership."

"Brennan, you're describing a skeleton. A skeleton of a friendship. A skeleton of a partnership." Angela sighed. "Skeletons belong in a lab, sweetie. Not in between two people who have lived inside each other's heads for the better part of six years."

"Please, Angela," Brennan said softly. "I'm asking you as my friend. Don't interfere."

"Are you at least going to go see him?" Angela demanded, clearly unappeased.

Brennan's pulse accelerated at the thought of walking into his room and seeing him fully conscious, rather than in the sedated, feverish coma he'd been in for days. She sternly brought her emotions under control and replied as casually as she could,

"I will visit him to ensure he is receiving adequate medical care, and brief Hannah on developments she should be on the alert for. Her flight was supposed to arrive this morning."

"Oh, Brennan." Angela suddenly looked defeated. "Fine. Go assess his medical symptomology or whatever. I'll hold off on bashing his head in until his skull fracture at least heals."

Brennan smiled and awkwardly hugged her friend. "Thanks, Ange."

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Part 4 of 4. **

**Thanks to L. for her wonderful beta and constant encouragement in finishing up this piece. And thanks so much to all the readers who reviewed this story. Next Thursday, I'll post Part 1 of 2 for my next fic: **_**One of Those Days**_**. **

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**

The nurse checked Booth's IV line one more time, made sure the arm of the bed was firmly locked in place, then snapped the lights off and exited quietly. Booth tried to get comfortable on the too-flat pillow by making minimal adjustments to the angle of his neck. It wasn't working. Every time he turned his head even slightly, or tried to wriggle slightly further down under the covers, his body protested volubly.

Resigned to being miserable for the foreseeable future, he closed his eyes and exhaled harshly in frustration, which was a very bad idea given the battered condition of his lungs. Tiny embers of pain glowed inside his chest, triggering a cough that only fanned the coals into flames.

"You should not be flat on your back."

Of its own volition, his head tried to turn toward the sound of the voice, but, once again, his nerve endings put a stop to that quickly.

"Bones?"

"Don't talk," she reprimanded, appearing at his side and hovering directly over him so he wouldn't have to look sideways to see her.

Booth stared up, blinking to clear away the tears from the drops the nurse had instilled a few minutes earlier in his eyes. The tears made her look all blurry and soft-edged, as though he were looking at her from beneath the surface of a lake. The distortion made no difference—he would have known her anywhere, if not by her voice, by the glint of her eyes. Usually, he would've recognized her hair too, by its soft, red-gold sheen, but today there was no such shine.

As his vision finally cleared, he took in the tangled, flat mat sitting on top of her head. It was obvious somebody had made an attempt to wipe some of the mud off, but layers of twigs, leaves and clumps of dirt remained glued to her scalp. Her face was free of dirt, save for the places where her hair had brushed it, but there was no missing the web of scratches covering her cheeks.

"Wow," Booth rasped, reaching up automatically to touch her face in spite of the automatic reprisal from his body. "Bones. What happened to you?"

She flinched back from his touch. "I sustained some minor abrasions when Broadsky's shot shattered Taffett's tombstone."

His hand lingered in the air for a second, then dropped reluctantly. "Bones," he began, not knowing where he could possibly start this conversation. "I —"

"My injuries would have been far worse had you not knocked me to the ground," she interrupted, running her eyes across him. "You have no injury to your spinal cord. Why are you on your back?"

She stepped away from the bed and vanished from his sight. He heard the sound of her footsteps retreating, the door opening, then closing.

Booth's hands tightened around the sheets. Okay. If she never came back, he couldn't blame her. She'd made sure he was being cared for adequately. Now she could go home and shower. Get some well-deserved sleep. Even as he thought those things, he knew he was doing his partner a disservice. She wouldn't walk away from him.

He heard the door open again and Brennan's firmest squint voice filtered into the room.

"There is no medical reason why he should remain in a fully reclining position. He will be able to breathe much more easily if you elevate his upper body."

A minute later, a new nurse appeared at his bedside with an irate look on her face. He messed around with the bed controls for a moment, then helped Booth ease into a semi-sitting position, propped up by much larger pillows. In this position, not only could he immediately breathe better, he could also look around the room. He found Brennan standing by the doorway, watching the nurse with the kind of look she gave new interns who hadn't yet proven their worth.

The nurse nodded curtly at Booth and stalked away.

"Hey, Bones," he joked awkwardly. "Way to make the doctors mad at me."

Brennan said nothing, but approached him again. She glanced at the medical chart attached to his bed.

"You are allowed oral fluids." She poured a glass of water from the nearby nightstand, never meeting his eyes. "After you repeatedly vomited, the medical staff was forced to extubate you in order to prevent your choking. Fortunately, you did not require a ventilator beyond the first 24 hours." She inserted a straw and held the glass out to him. "Last time you woke from a coma, you were thirsty."

"Listen, Bones." Booth took a couple of sips of the tepid water and swished them around in his mouth to try and get rid of some of the awful taste. Man, he needed to brush his teeth. "We need to talk."

"That is incorrect." She placed the glass back on the table. "While you are capable of speech, your trachea is undoubtedly inflamed. You should not speak."

He hated how guarded she sounded almost as much as he hated knowing he was responsible for that barrier between them.

Brennan busied herself refilling the glass that didn't need refilling. "Other than the skull fracture,your injuries are remarkably minimal." She put the glass down and turned her attention to the covers at the foot of his bed, which didn't need untangling. She began neatening them anyway. "You should be able to go home by Friday. It's fortunate that you didn't contract aspiration pneumonia."

"It's fortunate I'm not dead, you mean," he retorted, glad when she finally looked up at him again with a slightly less blank expression on her face. "You saved my life, Bones."

"You also saved mine."

Her words reminded him of the fear he'd felt when he realized the trap Broadsky had laid. Knowing Brennan was walking straight into the sniper's line of fire had been worse than waking up buried six feet under. He reached out again, his fingers connecting with the sleeve of her shirt. She seemed to stiffen, but didn't pull away.

"You're okay, right?" he asked, trying to give her a quick once-over even when his eyesight wasn't exactly cooperating yet.

Unexpectedly, Brennan sat down in the chair beside him. She carefully moved his hand back to a neutral position on his chest, then placed hers over top of it. "I'm uninjured. Unlike you. You need to rest, Booth."

His brain apparently agreed with her, as his eyelids began to droop involuntarily. Booth struggled to remain conscious, determined to have this conversation before he fell back asleep again. He focused all his attention on Brennan's scratched face. Her tired eyes. He hadn't been dreaming—she obviously hadn't left the hospital since he was brought in, however long ago that was.

"Bones. I'm sorry."

"You shouldn't have pursued Broadsky without back-up." She moved as if she was going to pull her hand away.

Booth wrapped his fingers around hers. "Not for that. For the SUV."

He watched the shutter drop across her eyes, preparing to ward off further hurt. "No apology is necessary. You were merely clarifying boundaries that I already knew existed." Brennan made another attempt to free herself, but carefully, so as not to hurt him. He took advantage of her caution and hung on tightly, refusing to let her escape.

She looked away from him, her hand still imprisoned under his. "I rejected your advances. Your decision to move on into a new relationship with Hannah was the rational response."

"I'm not apologizing for trying to moving on." Booth wished his throat and eyes didn't feel like sandpaper. "The way I did it—shoving it in your face. Cutting you out of my personal life as much as I did. I wasn't nice to you, Bones."

Her head dropped to her chest and she was quiet for a long moment before replying in a thick, unnatural voice. "You weren't."

"I'm sorry," Booth repeated, exerting a considerable amount of effort to reach out and nudge her chin upright.

Brennan looked at him through red-rimmed eyes. The long days without sleep had clearly taken their toll on her ability to maintain a solid emotional façade.

"We have to talk," he muttered, damning the heavy curtain of sleep that was pressing insistently upon him. "I need to explain."

"You were angry at me," Brennan said quietly, unusually perceptive. "You had a right to be. I hurt you, Booth. My insistence that things go back to the way they had always been prior to your declaration—the request was not well-reasoned. I failed to take into consideration the impact my rejection would have on you."

"So I turned around and rejected you, so you would know how it felt." His own emotional safeguards were apparently also down due to the extreme fatigue. The admission, one he had avoided ever since his return from Afghanistan, wasn't thought out, but he didn't regret it. "I tried to move on, Bones. It didn't work. I—"

"You need to have this conversation with Hannah prior to making any further revelations to me," Brennan interrupted.

"Bones, Hannah and I are finished."

Brennan finally did pull away, both hands coming to rest on the railing of the bed. "I don't—"

It was his turn to interrupt. "Are we finished too, Bones?" he asked tiredly, needing to know before the lights went out again. "Did I break us completely?"

"We are broken. Yes." Brennan's voice was soft.

His eyes slid closed, so heavy this time that he couldn't fight them in spite of the intense regret. Sleep clamored at the edges of his mind, pulling him under like a riptide. He was almost gone when he felt a gentle hand wrap around his again.

"Even severe metaphorical fractures can undergo remodeling."

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**

"Heads up, squints!"

The familiar voice caused several heads to turn on the platform. Booth stood at the foot of the stairs, dressed in his usual expensive work attire, complete with gaudy tie and striped socks. The only difference was the cane that somebody had obviously coerced him into using to assist him with his balance, and the bandages still swathing his skull.

Angela watched him scan the platform, searching. He obviously couldn't make it up the stairs without showing too much effort, or he'd already be gimping his way toward Brennan's office. The FBI Agent was completely unaware of his partner's silent approach from behind him.

Brennan crossed the lobby, from the guard station where she'd been waiting impatiently ever since hearing that Booth had checked out of rehab in Virginia and was on his way to the Jeffersonian a week earlier than he was supposed to be fully ambulant. Angela wasn't certain what, exactly, had or had not been discussed by the partners during Booth's extended recovery, but she did know that Brennan had been firm about not discussing Hannah's departure or its ramifications on their relationship until Booth was in a better mental and physical state. The scientist looked equal parts ecstatic and irritated as she touched Booth's shoulder.

He swung around, discreetly catching the railing for balance. The blow to his skull had left him with what doctors believed was temporary middle ear damage, leaving him prone to vertigo. Brennan automatically reached out and grabbed his elbow, simultaneously giving Angela a look that suggested she didn't want this to be an afternoon dramedy for the entire squint crew. The artist hid a smile. There wasn't much she could do to dissuade her coworkers from watching the highly anticipated reunion scene.

"He-ey, Bones!" Booth grinned, managing to look rakish in spite of his more than slightly battered appearance.

Brennan scowled. Of all the squints, only Angela knew her well enough to see her barely-contained delight. "You are not supposed to be here."

He shrugged, unimpressed as ever by her scolding. "There's a lot of things I'm not supposed to be. Alive is one of them."

"Why were you released early?" she demanded. "When I enrolled you in the physical therapy program, it was with the assurance that—"

"So I busted out of jail." He waggled his eyebrows. "You gonna turn me in?"

"Don't do it, Dr. Brennan," Cam advised from her station at a nearby computer. "Ex-convicts are notoriously vengeful creatures."

"He might take you hostage," Angela added, thoroughly enjoying Brennan's aggravated expression. For the last month and a half, her friend had been wandering around with a lost, closed-off look that only briefly disappeared after her regular visits to check on Booth's progress at the 5 star rehabilitation center she'd pulled strings to get him into. Clearly avoiding sleep, Brennan had put in even more punishing hours than usual, her eyes darting so frequently to the platform stairs that Angela had been tempted to blow up a life-size photograph of Booth and laminate it.

"Hear that, Bones?" Booth tucked her arm into the crook of his elbow and waved his cane at the onlookers. "You're my prisoner."

Brennan flushed, but didn't pull away. "What's the ransom?" she asked dryly.

"Diner pie," he informed her, grinning widely. "With ice cream."

The small smile that crossed her best friend's face made Angela want to squeal. Atypically, she contained herself.

"I'm taking lunch early today," Brennan called up to Cam.

Her boss waved a hand in acknowledgment, continuing to focus on the screen in front of her.

Angela watched them go, not missing how heavily Booth leaned on Brennan, or the way Brennan kept looking up at him, as though reassuring herself he wasn't some figment of her imagination.

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**

Their favorite waitress looked up in surprise as they walked in the door. The diner was relatively quiet, and she was hovering by the cash register, chatting with a new trainee.

"I thought you weren't due back for another week," Natalie exclaimed.

"Been talkin' about me, Bones?" Booth teased.

She bristled. "You regularly eat here at least 3 times a week. She asked me where you were, and I explained that you had been injured in the line of duty."

Natalie grabbed two menus, but Booth held up a hand. "Actually, Natalie, can we get an a la mode slice and a Greek salad to go, dressing on the side? And two coffees, the usual way."

The waitress nodded and moved toward the kitchen with their order, pausing to refill various water glasses on the way.

Brennan glanced outside, where thunderclouds were rapidly covering the early afternoon sunshine. "It might be preferable to eat inside today."

"We are," Booth answered. "Just not here."

She was more disappointed than she cared to admit. It had been a long time since she had a diner meal with Booth that was uninterrupted by a third party. In truth, she had hoped 'being held hostage' would show a little more promise, at least in the way of conversation. His time in Virginia had been far enough removed from their usual lives that it had allowed them to start over in a sense, as though the previous year hadn't really occurred. They had begun to re-establish a comfort level around each other that had been missing for quite some time. Being back in DC together seemed suddenly to take things between them backwards a step. Everything was awkward again.

"Do you want to go back to my office so I can fill you in on our most recent cases while we eat?"

Booth handed Natalie several bills, took the food from her and handed it over to Brennan, who wasn't hampered by a cane. "I wasn't planning on talking shop during our lunch break."

Confused, Brennan followed him back outside into the increasingly dark, chilly afternoon. Without explanation, he led her around the back of the small establishment, to the parking lot they never used. Booth's SUV was stationed in the far corner, separated from the other cars by a line of trash cans.

"How did—" Brennan glanced from the car back to Booth. "You drove," she accused. "That's why you didn't let me know you were leaving Virginia."

He swung his cane cheerfully as he unlocked the doors. "If I'd told you I needed a ride back home, you would've turned me into the prison wardens."

"This isn't a joke," Brennan snapped, climbing into the passenger seat and watching to make sure he got in okay. "You could have hurt yourself, or somebody else, had you lost control."

"Jared drove me." He pulled himself in and slammed the door behind him, wincing as the loud noise and vibrations obviously bothered his still-healing fractures. "Okay, Bones? No innocent lives were endangered."

She handed him the bag containing his pie and settled their coffees in the cup holder. "I would have picked you up."

"I know you would've, Bones." He extracted the container with his dessert and set it on his knee. "I just didn't want to do things that way."

"I don't know what that means." Brennan removed her own lunch from its bag and pried open the plastic top. "To what way are you referring?"

Instead of digging into his meal, which was getting increasingly soupy as the ice cream melted all over the steaming pastry, Booth slid it onto the dashboard of the car and turned to Brennan.

"You didn't want to talk about … stuff … when I was going through PT."

Something inside her fluttered at the intent look in his eyes.

"I'm not in rehab anymore, Bones."

She put the fork down, suddenly not hungry.

"I gotta say this. Maybe you don't want to hear it, but," Booth waved his hands in the manner he typically used when at a loss for accurate phrasing. "you have to anyway."

Brennan waited, feeling an absurd urge to squirm nervously in her seat. Instead, she composed herself and waited with what she hoped was a neutral expression on her face.

"I have a lot of regrets about … everything," he said quietly, holding her gaze. "Maybe not moving on, so much. You said you weren't interested, so I looked somewhere else … for some reason, though, it always felt like cheating."

She frowned. "We were never in a romantic relationship, therefore those sentiments were inappropriate."

"Don't tell me my feelings are inappropriate, okay, Bones?" His harsh tone took her off guard.

Brennan scrunched back into the seat, and dropped her eyes to her lap.

Beside her, Booth exhaled loudly and tapped his fingers on the center console. "Maybe I was cheating on you, maybe I wasn't. The bottom line is, that's how my gut felt. And that's when this whole thing went wrong between. This." He waved between then, drawing an imaginary line. "That night … I shouldn't have listened to Sweets. Neither of us was ready to take that step."

She stared out her window, feeling cold inside. She rubbed her arms. "It's understandable that you regret telling me, given my reaction."

"No." Again, his tone was sharp, so sharp that she felt compelled to look over and found him glaring at the brick wall directly in front of the SUV. His head swung toward hers and she couldn't read the look on his face. "That's not what I was saying, Bones. I shouldn't have told you, but I did. I'm glad I did. It needed to be said."

For no reason, Brennan felt the chill dissipate slightly.

"What I should've done after that is apologize," Booth went on, oblivious to her internal thermostat fluctuations. He snapped his fingers. "That's what my gut was saying. I should've told you that we weren't ready, but that I was willing to wait … instead, you bolted for Maluku, and I cut and ran to the Middle East."

"I also share in the responsibility for damaging our partnership," she pointed out. "I should have realized how irretrievably different a year apart would make us."

"It didn't make us different, Bones," he corrected. "It made _things _different. And, yeah, it wasn't all me. Afghanistan might not have been a total fluke—you did kind of dropkick my heart into next week."

She didn't ask what the idiom meant. This one, at least, was apparent.

"My intention wasn't to hurt you," she said softly, looking away again.

"See … that's the problem right there, Bones." She heard him lean the chair back, followed by rustling as he tried to get comfortable. Their food was long forgotten by this point. "You didn't mean to hurt me, but I think I might have meant to hurt you."

She had considered the notion. It wasn't entirely a surprise. Nevertheless, it was painful to hear the admission.

"I'm not sorry about Hannah, Bones. She may have wound up hurt more than either of us, not knowing what she was getting in the middle of. I needed something to hold onto in Afghanistan and you never wrote to me … she was there."

Brennan reached for her necklace, tracing the ridges in an attempt to martial her emotional. "I attempted to write you. The words … they were just never right."

"All you had to do was say hi." His tone was low. Cool. "_'Hey, Booth, how you doin'? How's life in the sticks? Love, your favorite squint.' _Justknowing that you were thinking of me, worrying about me—maybe I wouldn't have dragged Hannah into this whole mess. Who knows."

"I did think about you." Brennan's mind flashed back to the many long nights when she had lain awake, staring at a framed picture of the two of them on her bedside table. "I thought about you frequently."

"Even after Hannah and I hooked up, it didn't feel right," he continued. "Not in my gut, y'know. But I went with it, because sometimes the war messes with your head, so who knows. I thought I might stand a chance … and then she showed up in DC."

More memories filled Brennan's head, this time of seeing Booth's new girlfriend for the first time, as she entered the coffee shop and wrapped her arms around 'Seeley.'

Booth was still talking, as she was remembering. "Having a woman come after me, instead of the other way around—that was new, Bones. And nice. Like I was worth something."

She winced at the emptiness in his voice. "You're worth a great deal to me, Booth. I'm sorry if I haven't shown you that more empirically."

"The whole point is—I wanted to hurt you, Bones. When Hannah showed up, I figured it was a way to get back at you. To show you somebody actually wanted what I had to offer. I mean—I didn't think like that back then. I was really trying to move on. I tried to make myself belief I had already. So it wasn't scripted or anything. But I wanted you to see what you had missed out on. Looking back, that's obvious."

"You succeeded." Brennan felt her throat tighten and reached for the handle on the door, but it was too late. The tears were already running down her face. She fumbled for the lock, desperate to avoid a second humiliation in the same passenger seat.

She was halfway out of the car when Booth rounded the front and stopped, blocking her only avenue of escape, unless she wanted to crawl over garbage cans.

"We hurt each other, Bones," he said gruffly, reaching up to drag his hand through his hair and dropping it as he remembered the bandages. "The thing I regret the most isn't Hannah—it's that night when you cried in the car with me."

They had never discussed that night in any depth—had never discussed it at all, until his most recent hospital stay. She had no desire to talk about it. The garbage cans weren't looking so bad now. She took a step toward them.

Booth reached out and caught her arm. Brennan pulled away, but he held on, his poor equilibrium keeping her from pulling too hard.

"Let me go, Booth." Her words were a frantic snarl. She couldn't do this. Not a second time.

"This is what I should have done that night, Bones." He pulled her towards him, his eyes never wavering from her face. "Even if I was with Hannah, I should've stopped the car, gone around to the other side, and hugged you."

"Don't do this." She made a halfhearted attempt to get away, but temptation won out in the end. She had missed him. Stiffly, she stood in the circle of his arms, not bending, nor making any moves to escape.

His arms locked around her waist, pulling her closer. "You opened yourself that night, Temperance. You let down the shields, and I should've told you how proud I was."

She hated him at that moment. Hated him for making her cry again, and for being someone she couldn't stop loving or push away in spite of all the pain.

He gently nudged her head until it came to rest on his shoulder. "Instead of just saying that I'd moved on, I should've told you you'd find somebody else. That's what a good friend would have done, Bones. That's what I'm sorry for, above everything else."

Her shoulders shook with the effort to contain her sobs, which she'd so far managed to keep silent. Her hands fisted in his shirt, seeking some kind of relief for the mixture of grief and anger overwhelming her senses.

His hands slid into her hair and he cupped her face, lifting it to look at him. To her shock, there was a sheen of tears in his own eyes.

"What I regret—what I really wish I could change—is that night, Bones." He brushed away one of the many tears running down her face, his fingers lingering on her cheek. "And I don't know what to say—" his voice cracked and he took a deep breath before continuing, "to fix it."

He looked suddenly helpless, as though now that he'd said his piece, he no longer knew what the next step was. Brennan wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled herself in as close as possible to him. Closer than close, so she could feel his breath against her neck, the thud of his heart beside her breast.

"We've missed two opportunities." Brennan lifted her head and stared up at him hopefully. Sweets had originally indicated they had missed their moment … but then they had had another one, and they'd missed that too. Maybe if there had been two there could be… "Do you think we could try again and do things differently?"

"You know what they say …" Booth leaned in, his thumbs stroking her damp cheeks.

"I don't," Brennan corrected. "What does who say?"

His lips hovered just above hers teasingly. "Gamblers, Bones. It's an old saying-third time lucky."

She didn't believe in luck. Except maybe, just a little, at that minute when the gambler's mouth covered hers and she could feel him smiling, his laughter vibrating gently through her body as they kissed. And kissed. And kissed.

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**


End file.
